Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Broken cameras, shattered lens.

Broken cameras, shattered lens.
Epitaph for a failed Oscar movie.

5 Broken Cameras followed in the recent tradition of Israeli produced anti-Israel movies that somehow found their way to the Hollywood red carpet of the Oscar ceremony.
Losing movies have included Waltz with Bashir, and The GateKeepers.
As with all movies the audience gets the director's perspective. In the case of 5 Broken Cameras it is a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel perspective as evidenced by the "hero" of the movie, Emad Burnat, a resident of the Palestinian Arab town of Bili'in, the man behind the cameras.
As Israeli Knesset member, Moti Yogev, said, "these cameras only show part of the picture and twist it in a way that does not reflect the conflict."
Anyone not familiar with the background to the conflict would sympathize with the narrators viewpoint, related and filmed over a prolonged period and delivered in a personal manner that includes his wife and children.
The average viewer would not know that essential parts of the film were left on the cutting room floor, parts that would have shown a different perspective, even if they had been shot by Burnat himself.
For example, one of the characters in the movie was a man called Adeeb, a friend of Burnat from Bili'in. In 2009, Adeeb was accused of several offences, including inciting the villager to throw rocks at soldiers, disturbing publi order, and confronting security forces. The court convicted Adeeb and were forced to increase his sentence after an appeal based on additional evidence that was presented to the court. This additional evidence was part of the film made by Burnat that showed Adeeb viciously beating an IDF solder with a club. The court decided that Adeeb had acted independently and not in response to any conduct of the soldiers.
The absence of this scene from "5 Broken Cameras" is a clear indictment of the director's intent to show a film biased against Israel to make his point.
The director, Guy Davidi, said the film does not stage scenarios or distort facts, but a group of IDF reservists don't agree with him. They have begun a campaign to stop incitement in the Israeli movie inductry. They also are considering suing the creators of 5 Broken Cameras for libel.